paintings by Karen Marston, curated by David Gibson

Karen Marston extends the walls of Gallery One to house four large canvases from her latest series exploring the complex relationship of the physical and metaphysical world. For her first exhibit with Dam, Stuhltrager, Marston boldly takes on a topic that inherently fights against being contained in words or pictures. The artist delves unabashed into visually articulating the concept of the “human condition”- an omnipresent idea that it takes a tangible structure to house and sustain a force as uninhibited as life itself.

To make visual such an ethereal subject as the connection between body and spirit, Marston’s paintings draw directly from nature. Anatomical components of the circulatory and respiratory system appear and are transformed into environments. The exhibit title, “Breathing Room” is utterly appropriate as heart, lung and veins are transfused by the artist into vines, branches, trees, forests. In Marston’s hands, the parts of the human body become actual places breeding all the signs of life. Her paintings depict worlds where “Rooms” extend beyond spaces that elements occupy into structures that allow growth and enable “Breathing”. Marston’s places are built and sustained not by human hands but by the larger powers of nature.

On one level I am examining the essential physicality of the heart, lungs, breath and nature, repetitions of patterns and structures in the body and the environment. On another level a metaphor unfolds, speaking of pain, loss and regeneration. – K. Marston 2007